


Heaven is A Lysander

by valierentine



Category: Code Name Verity Series - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Sad Ending, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 02:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18489850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valierentine/pseuds/valierentine
Summary: You see, heaven isn’t gold-paved streets, pearly gates, and harmonizing angels. Heaven is eating the top off of a boiled egg so it looks like the sun peeking through a cloud bank. It’s a girl in a WAAF uniform perching on the tip of a tree in the dratted drenching rain, playing her best friend’s Great Game. It’s flying in a Spitfire plane and the sun turns green and you can’t help but hold your breath and believe in angels again.





	Heaven is A Lysander

Heaven is a Lysander 

A Code Name Verity fanfiction

This story is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the face of unspeakable evil   
1939-1945

1943  
Nazi-Occupied France

When I was huddled sobbing and snivelling in the corner, wiping my nose in my own hair because I just couldn’t take it anymore, when I stood in my underwear with my back against an iron rod, being taken apart like a wireless set, when someone pressed a cigarette to my skin and didn’t stop until it smoked, I couldn’t imagine such a thing as Hell. No, no, there could be no Hell, for I was already living it.   
As I scribbled out my confession, my condemnation, and my redemption, I couldn’t think of heaven, either. What could heaven be that was better than flying across Stockport on Maddie’s motorcycle?   
Even when they loaded me into that cattle truck, a hundred stinking bodies packed against each other like rotten sardines, I couldn’t think of death. I had no clue what would happen, except that it would be better than this, it had to be better, or else why would soldiers charge so bravely into gunfire like it was nothing but rain? Or mothers give their lives for their children? Or Scottish spies like me parachute into Occupied France? There could be no answer except for that we all know. Death must be better. It has to be.   
I remember the cattle truck brakes screeching harshly to a stop, and the Nazis dumped us out on the street like yesterday’s trash. One, two, three, four, quicker than lightning, too quick for me to react, bullets kissed a handful of prisoners in the chest, and they fell. It happened so fast, so dratted fast. If I’d had the misfortune to be at the end of the line, I could’ve been one of them. And that’s it. Lights out. Another warm, beating heart sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine.   
Of course, now I’ve been kissed by a bullet, too-Kiss me, Hardy-and I don’t regret it. At least I don’t think so. There wasn’t really another option.   
I’ll never forget that moment, the one that sealed my fate. (Well, truly there were many such moments, but this was likely the end-all-be-all). I heard my best friend blubbering away in the bushes. I’d always recognize Maddie’s fear-of-gunfire sobs. Such a brave pilot, everyone says...unless, of course, dear old Maddie-lass is being fired on, and then. Well, she’ll fly the plane the same whether she’s crying or not, in any case. Fly the plane, Maddie.   
I knew my face lit up in spite of myself, but I didn’t care a jot. Let Maddie see the joy in my eyes, let her know that I know. Maddie’s alive! Oh, Maddie...And then I realized: I had no choice. She had to kiss me.   
“Kiss me, Hardy, kiss me quick!” I inhaled, breathing in the French air that smelled like December. I hadn’t been outside in so long. I know she’ll do it. If she loved me any less she wouldn’t be able to. But she’s my best friend. I know she’s strong enough.   
She was. And I am. And we are.   
She pulled the trigger. Fly the plane, Maddie.  
Maddie will make it without me.   
I just don’t know if I can make it without her. 

I used to think death would be like falling asleep, and then you wake up in front of the pearly gates, and an angel comes out and tells you if you’ll be going up or down. That wasn’t what it was like at all, I’ve got to tell you.   
Death was like flying in a Lysander plane: the whole world suspended below you as if you’re looking at it through a pane of ice. Everything glittering in the dying sunlight etched in gold. Clouds puttered past me, and I wanted to reach out and touch them, drink their mists. A silver river ribboned below me, growing smaller and smaller as I went, higher and higher. The way Maddie did, when she ferried me. I couldn’t brake, couldn’t descend. I was stuck in the climb.  
A warm hand scooped me up. Instead of feeling afraid, as I usually would, I smiled. This hand was much different than the hands I were used to; hands of Nazi Hauptsturmfuhrers, RAF boys after a dance, French turncoats. No, och, these hands were comforting, kind. Like Jamie’s or Maddie’s. I knew I was safe.   
God whispered a few words to me, quiet and still. He set me on my feet again once more in a sprawling meadow in Scotland, Craig Castle, Castle Craig, Aberdeenshire.   
You see, heaven isn’t gold-paved streets, pearly gates, and harmonizing angels. Heaven is eating the top off of a boiled egg so it looks like the sun peeking through a cloud bank. It’s a girl in a WAAF uniform perching on the tip of a tree in the dratted drenching rain, playing her best friend’s Great Game. It’s flying in a Spitfire plane and the sun turns green and you can’t help but hold your breath and believe in angels again.   
It’s timeless here, and ageless. It’s everything and nothing at once.   
Here I cry myself to sleep in Maddie’s arms, time and time again, shedding hairpins and tears, feeling the warmth of her heartbeat. I run, laughing, cresting the hill of Castle Craig in the orange-and-purple sunset. I drink the Scottish rain. I cower under Maddie’s brolly as gunfire pours upon us, and I man the flak cannons with my best friend by my side. Here I float with my brother Jamie in the North Sea, helping him keep his fingers warm; I cut damask roses with my great-aunt until the whole world smells like autumn; I put my arms around Isolde von Linden-Isolde, still, in the realm of the sun-as she weeps because her father has left her behind.   
Here I fly with Maddie on her motorcycle, and Stockport is at our feet like a tartan picnic blanket. Here I am dancing again at RAF Maidsend, sharing cigarettes with my blubbering girl. Here I sleep, veiled in my grandmother’s communion finest, draped in damask roses beside the river. I relive the past, the present, and the future, over and over again, the good parts and the bad, but somehow I only see the light. I only feel happiness, no-the deepest sort of joy-even as I am once again imprisoned in the Nazi’s Château de Bordeaux. It’s the strangest kind of beautiful.   
I’m in the present now, and I place my hand on Maddie’s shoulder. She’s being interrogated by that...that Bloody Machiavellian Intelligence Officer about her role in my death. Oh, how I’d love to have a go at him!   
I hear Maddie’s voice again-och, what love it fills me with, that pilot’s voice, shaky and kind, strong with a Northern English accent. More tears spring to my eyes as I think, I wonder how much she wants to hear my voice again. I wish Maddie could hear me. I wish she knew that I am here.   
“I murdered her, I murdered Julie!” Careless talk costs lives. My heart both breaks and wants to laugh. Oh, daft Maddie-lass, you didn’t murder me at all. Kiss me, Hardy. It doesn’t count if I asked you to. Does she really think she murdered me? My heart shatters again. A million pieces, stuck in the climb.   
She’s blubbering again, but she manages. She tells her story to the Intelligence Officer. He seems sympathetic, even sorrowful.  
He buries his face in his hands. “That beautiful young woman, I-” He can’t finish his sentence. Suddenly I am ashamed for having wanted to fight him. He doesn’t deserve it; even if he is the reason I became a spy, the reason I was tortured, the reason I’m dead. He loved me...poor man. Loving me is a recipe for disaster.   
I have to leave now. I can feel heaven beckoning; death is impatient. What do they say? Death waits for no man. But I don’t want to go, I want to stay here, with Maddie, forever. I wrap my arms around her one more time, cry onto her shoulder one more time, and feel the warmth of her beating heart one more time. I don’t know when I’ll see her again. I hope she can feel my small hand on her shoulder, the way I used to touch her when we flew. Fly the plane, Maddie. Fly the plane. You never needed me. You’re a blasted good enough pilot on your own.   
Heaven is a Lysander, soaring over a French meadow. Heaven is a hand on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, a whisper in the ear. “Kiss me, Hardy.” Kiss me, quick.


End file.
